Medgeeks with Andrew Reid

Medgeeks

Better health, with better science. Medgeeks teaches the mechanisms underlying chronic disease and the upstream drivers of health, translating the primary literature for clinicians and the curious.

Subscribe for new podcasts covering nutrition, movement, sleep, mind-body health, metabolic medicine, and the systems approach to health optimization.

Andrew Reid is the founder of Medgeeks, which has trained over 10,000 clinicians since 2013. This podcast is where his clinical work, primary literature deep dives, and self-experimentation become accessible to a broader audience.

Andrew's training:
- Physician Assistant Program, University of California, Davis
- MS in Physician Assistant Studies, AT Still University
- MS in Personalized Nutrition, University of Connecticut
- Graduate Certificate in Precision Nutrition, University of Connecticut
- Didactics in Dietetics, California State University, Los Angeles

Learn more about our resources at medgeeks.co

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24 episodes
weekly
Avg 18 min
English

Episodes 24

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October 22 · 26 min
Reverse Fatty Liver in Weeks with Lifestyle
My Creating Health Protocol: https://functional.medgeeks.co/waitlist Besides weight loss, can anything else reverse fatty liver? In this podcast, you'll learn which nutrition and exercise changes can reduce liver fat, why normal liver enzymes don't rule it out, and what you may be overlooking, from sleep apnea to nutrient deficiencies. Everything is backed by the evidence. Leave with a clear picture of what can improve within weeks, what takes longer, and how to track progress.
September 17 · 23 min
How much protein do you need? RDA answers the wrong question.
Built for More: https://health.medgeeks.co/ In this podcast, I cover where the RDA came from, why the nitrogen balance method it's based on undercounts, and what newer research says the real requirement looks like. We'll also get into why the body doesn't need protein at all, and why leucine in particular matters more than total grams. From there, we'll go through how the requirement changes with muscle building, calorie deficits, aging, GLP-1 medications, and illness. Then finish with protein quality, the difference between plant and animal sources, and a few label pitfalls like collagen and amino spiking that make people think they're eating more protein than they are
August 28 · 19 min
Mitochondria, muscle, and aging
The lifestyle intensive: https://lifestyle.medgeeks.co/ Muscle does more than move you; it helps shape how you age. Explore the connection between exercise, mitochondria, and metabolic health, and learn how staying active helps preserve strength and function over time. "Use it or lose it" starts at the cellular level.
August 7 · 47 min
Are Seed Oils Harmful? What the Evidence Really Says
The Metabolic Roadmap: https://roadmap.medgeeks.co/ Seed oils may be the most polarized topic in nutrition. One side calls them a primary driver of inflammation, obesity, mitochondrial dysfunction, and chronic disease. The other points to lower LDL and observational data linking higher linoleic acid levels to better cardiovascular outcomes. So are they harmful? Are they safe? Or is the answer more nuanced than either side wants to admit? Truth is, both sides are wrong. Let's dive in.
August 1 · 18 min
10 Principles That Make Every Diet Argument Irrelevant
Take the free Metabolic Capacity Assessment: https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ Work with me: https://medgeeks.co/consult/work-with-me/ Food is more than calories and macros. It supplies the signals and raw materials your body needs to function, repair, and recover. Here are 10 practical nutrition principles for better metabolic health, body composition, and long-term resilience.
July 23 · 19 min
I Stopped Doing Cardio and Lost 50lbs (Do This Instead)
Free Metabolic Capacity Assessment 👉 https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ Body Composition Workshop 👉 https://medgeeks.co/workshops/90-day-fat-loss/ I stopped doing cardio and lost 50 pounds. It turned out cardio was never necessary to lose fat or change my body composition. In this podcast, I break down why you don't need cardio for fat loss, and the two things you should focus on instead to lose fat and build muscle.
July 15 · 18 min
Years of metabolic research in 20 minutes (we've been wrong)
Pro bono mitochondrial disease health coaching: https://medgeeks.co/consult/primary-mitochondrial-disease/ Free metabolic capacity assessment: https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ We've been looking at chronic disease all wrong. In this video, I distill years of metabolic research into 20 minutes. You'll learn why conditions that look unrelated often share the same root, why your labs can read "normal" while you still don't feel well, and why so many treatments move a marker without actually restoring the person.
July 2 · 22 min
Your Water Fast Is Eating Your Muscle (Do This Instead)
Free metabolic capacity assessment: https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ Waitlist to work with me: https://medgeeks.co/consult/work-with-me/ A water-only fast can quietly burn through your own muscle. The fix is a hybrid between the fasting mimicking diet and a protein-sparing modified fast (PSMF). In this podcast I walk through the exact protocol plus the results from my own bloodwork. Most people think fasting is only about cutting calories and dropping weight, but the science says it's doing far more. When researchers tracked a 7-day fast and measured thousands of blood proteins every day, they found the body crosses a threshold around day 3, where more than a thousand proteins shift at once across the brain, joints, heart, and immune system. The catch is that a straight water fast makes you pay for those benefits with muscle, and dragging restriction out too long can down-regulate your metabolism. So the real question isn't whether to fast, it's how to fast without losing muscle. I'll break down what a multi-day fast actually does to your body, whether fasting really causes muscle loss, and the protein-sparing approach I've now cycled four times for muscle preservation. I'm Andrew Reid, founder of Medgeeks. I trained as a physician assistant, hold a graduate degree in nutrition, and have had over 100,000 patient encounters and trained more than 10,000 clinicians in metabolic science. Free metabolic capacity assessment: https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/
June 26 · 42 min
The reason GLP-1s, keto, and calorie restriction aren't working (do this instead)
Learn more about working with me and join the waitlist: https://medgeeks.co/consult/work-with-me/ You're probably already doing more than you need. You eat clean. You try to exercise or at least move throughout the day. You try to get good sleep. Maybe you've even tried tracking your food, tried fasting, tried keto, or even tried a GLP-1. But here's what almost nobody tells you. The answer isn't more restriction, more intensity, another diet, another protocol, or another supplement stack. Doing all of this at the wrong time can not only keep you stuck but also set you back. This was never about doing more. It's about doing the right thing, in the right order, for your body. In this video, I'll show you the full spectrum, from disease to dysfunction to healthy to resilient. So you can see where you actually stand. Then we'll run a quick capacity check across the three things your whole metabolism runs on. So, by the end, you'll know your one constraint. The single thing to fix first, before anything else can move. You're not lazy. You're not failing. And you don't need to do more. You just need the right thing, in the right order. Let's find out where to start. Learn more about working with me and join the waitlist: https://medgeeks.co/consult/work-with-me/
June 19 · 26 min
The Real Reason You Get Tired
Free metabolic capacity assessment: https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ Waitlist to work with me: https://medgeeks.co/consult/work-with-me/ Why do we get tired? The afternoon crash usually isn't sleep, age, or laziness. It comes down to your metabolic capacity: your body's ability to produce energy, manage it, and recover from the demands placed on you. In this video, I break down the real biology of fatigue, from mitochondria and metabolic flexibility to insulin and why caffeine stops working, and how you can actually change it. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Why your mitochondria set your energy ceiling, not your willpower How you can carry thousands of calories of fuel and still crash Insulin, Randle's glucose-fatty acid cycle, and afternoon brain fog The adenosine mechanism behind caffeine, and why the 3rd coffee fails How recovery, HRV, and mitochondrial biogenesis rebuild capacity My name is Andrew Reid, and I'm the founder of Medgeeks. For 15 years, I've worked on two sides of the same problem: caring for patients and clients directly, and teaching the science of metabolism to the clinicians who treat them. I've had 100,000+ patient/client encounters, and 50,000+ people read my emails daily to get a handle on their metabolic health. Welcome to the Medgeeks community! Training: Physician Assistant, UC Davis MS in Personalized Nutrition, University of Connecticut Precision Nutrition, University of Connecticut Dietetics, Cal State LA
June 12 · 15 min
My Cardiologist Said I Was Perfectly Healthy. He Was Wrong.
My cardiologist ran a full cardiac workup (MRI, stress test, ambulatory ECG, labs) and told me I was perfectly healthy. I was 40 lbs overweight, insulin-resistant, nutritionally deficient, and running on 2–4 hours of sleep. Everything was "normal." Nothing was fine. ▶ FREE email course: the exact steps I used to go from dysfunction toward resilient health (no cost, straight to your inbox): https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ If you're a clinician, this one's for you. You read labs all day, but nobody is reading yours. And "normal" labs can hide a metabolism that's quietly drifting years before any diagnosis shows up. In this video, I break down the gap between what your bloodwork flags and what your body is actually doing; why conventional medicine is built to catch disease but not dysfunction, why the reference range fails you, and what it actually takes to move toward what I call resilient health. We cover insulin resistance, the reference range problem, cellular metabolism, an autoimmune marker (ANA) that turned negative once I fixed the underlying environment, and the full spectrum from dysfunction to disease-free to resilient health.
June 5 · 24 min
ProLon vs. Sardine Fast: Why I Was Wrong
I tested ProLon, the fasting-mimicking diet, against a 5-day sardine fast, ran my own bloodwork, and got the opposite result I expected. ProLon is the best-known version of the fasting-mimicking diet (FMD), a 5-day, low-calorie, plant-based protocol developed from Dr. Valter Longo's research at USC. The sardine fast is the cheap, unbranded version people keep hyping online. Free course (resilient health): https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ I ran both on myself about a month apart, kept calories low on each, and tracked the same markers throughout: IGF-1, fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, ketones, and glucose ketone index. I was sure the premium protocol would win. I had spent years studying these pathways and expected the plant-based, low-protein design to be the real driver. A few cans of fish gave me the opposite answer. What you'll see in this podcast: The exact lab data that flipped my prediction IGF-1 side by side: the FMD dropped mine 55 points, the sardine fast dropped it 88 How the sardine fast drove me into a deeper ketotic state than the $200 kit Where my fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, glucose, ketones, and GKI landed on each protocol A clearer way to understand mTOR and autophagy Why autophagy is not the on-off switch the internet claims Why a little of the right protein may help protect lean muscle during a deficit What this means for clinicians who want metabolic interventions patients can actually afford About: I'm Andrew Reid. I founded Medgeeks in 2013, and for the last five years, I've been rebuilding how I think about chronic disease from the cell up. My goal is to treat nutrition as a real therapeutic intervention, held to the same standard of rigor we expect from pharmaceuticals. Subscribe for nutrition held to a higher standard, with real data and honest answers even when they're inconvenient. Disclaimer: This is an N of 1 experiment on my own physiology, shared for educational purposes only. It is not medical advice. A protocol like this is not right for everyone, especially if you are lean, managing a chronic condition, or taking medication. Talk with your healthcare provider before attempting any form of fasting or significant dietary change.
May 29 · 36 min
My Daughter Saw 9 Specialists. They All Missed It.
When my daughter was six months old, her platelet count dropped to 2,000. Over the next two years she was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disease (MELAS), lupus, and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), and was seen by nine different specialists. Not one of them connected those findings to each other. Free course (resilient health): https://medgeeks.co/get-started/metabolic-health/ This is the story of what almost losing her taught me about chronic disease, why our current model of medicine keeps failing complex and chronically ill clients, and why I am back on the podcast after almost a decade away. I am Andrew Reid, founder of Medgeeks. I trained as a Physician Assistant, spent five years in primary care, and have spent over a decade since educating clinicians. None of it prepared me for my own daughter. To help her, I had to go back and learn the biology underneath chronic disease: mitochondrial medicine, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, metabolomics, and clinical nutrition. What I found changed how I think about every client I see. Going forward, this show is about that biology and the clinical reasoning that follows from it. Mitochondrial function, the cell danger response, metabolic health, autoimmune disease, insulin resistance, and the systems-based, root-cause approach to chronic disease that conventional training leaves out. We also get into the other side of that same continuum: building muscle, exercise as medicine, sleep, nutrition, and the levers that move someone toward genuinely optimal health. The goal is simple: better health, with better science. Whether you are a clinician reasoning through complex clients, someone facing chronic illness in your own life or your family's, or you are already healthy and want to understand how to optimize and protect that health for the long run, this is the work I want to do in front of you. If this resonated, the best thing you can do is follow the show wherever you listen and leave a review. It genuinely helps more clinicians and more families find this work. Thank you for being here.
Oct 21, 2024 · 7 min
Halloween Scaries
In this episode, we will dive into the chilling world of historical medical treatments. From Belladonna eye drops used to dilate pupils to mercury being used to remove reckles or skin blemishes. These treatments, while now unimaginable, were once believed to be benificial. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal for some spine-chilling journey through the past of medicine.
Oct 14, 2024 · 9 min
Hemophilia Part 2
In the next podcast episode, we will continue our talk on hemophilia. Specifically the treatment of hemophilia. We'll discuss the different types of therapy available, from traditional factor replacement to emerging gene-techniques. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal as he helps us manage hemophilia patients.
Oct 7, 2024 · 10 min
Hemophilia Part 1
Have you ever wondered about the history hemophilia? In this episode, we will dive into the world of hemophilia, a hereditary bleeding disorder that affects millions worldwide. We'll explore the basics of this condition, including genetic causes and how it impacts individuals. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal for another genetic blood disorder.
Sep 30, 2024 · 8 min
Hereditary Elliptocytosis
Hereditary elliptocytosis, a blood disorder marked by abnormally shaped red blood cells, can significantly impact quality of life. In this episode, we delve into the world of elliptocytosis, exploring its causes, symptoms, and the challenges faced by those living with this condition. Common symptoms include fatigue, anemia, jaundice, and abdominal or splenic pain. Diagnosis typically involves a blood test examining red blood cell shape and size. Treatment may include medications, blood transfusions, and potentially splenectomy. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal as we discuss this rare, genetic blood conditon.
Sep 23, 2024 · 9 min
Gilbert's Syndrome
In this episode, we delve into the world of Gilbert's Syndrome, a common genetic condition affecting the liver's bilirubin processing. We'll discuss symptoms, diagnosis, treatment options, and dispels common misconceptions. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal and discover how to navigate the challenges of Gilbert's Syndrome.
Sep 16, 2024 · 9 min
It's All in the Blood - G6PD
In this next episode, it might leave you feeling red in the face. We will dive into the world of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. A condition that can lead to hemolytic anemia, a condition where the red blood cells break down prematurely. We'll discuss the genetic condition and its causes, the signs and symptoms your patient might present with, the diagnosis and treatments such as avoiding triggers, regular blood tests and possibly blood transfusions. Join Dr. Niket Sonpal on this often overlooked condition. September 16, 2024
Sep 9, 2024 · 9 min
It's All in the Blood - Hereditary Spherocytosis
In our upcoming hematology series, we'll delve into the fascinating world of genetic blood disorders. Our first episode will focus on Hereditary Spherocytosis (HS), a condition characterized by the production of abnormally shaped red blood cells resembling spheres instead of the usual disc-like shape. We'll explore the underlying genetic mutation that causes HS and how it impacts the structure and function of red blood cells. Next, we'll discuss the common symptoms associated with HS, such as anemia, fatigue, jaundice, and abdominal pain. We'll also delve into the diagnostic process, including blood tests and genetic analysis. Finally, we'll discuss the available treatment options for HS, which may include blood transfusions, medications, and in some cases, splenectomy. Join Dr. Niket as we explore this rare genetic blood disorder and learn more about its impact on individuals and families. September 9, 2024

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